


Basic Biology

by fuzzballsheltiepants



Series: High School Science [3]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Body insecurity, Brief mentions of Kevin and adoptive mother!Bee, Kissing, M/M, Prompt Fill, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-06 19:33:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18857668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuzzballsheltiepants/pseuds/fuzzballsheltiepants
Summary: A couple of months after Laws of Physics.  Andrew doesn't know why Neil won't go swimming; Neil reveals his burn scars from the car accident that killed his mother, and the two of them reassure each other.





	Basic Biology

**Author's Note:**

> This was from the kiss prompts; I had several requests for "A kiss on a scar" and/or "A kiss on a place of insecurity" so I decided to combine them. Reminder that in this AU Bee adopted Andrew and Aaron when they were 13, and Neil lives with Stuart since his mother died in a car accident.

The buzz of Andrew’s phone against his desk had him lunging for it.  He tripped over his own feet and almost fell, catching himself on the back of his chair.  At least nobody was around to see it. But Neil was late, and he was almost never late.

It was Kevin.   _Where tf are you guys?_

Andrew gritted his teeth in irritation.   _Ask your bff, he’s the one running late_  After all, Andrew had been ready for half an hour, dressed in his rarely-used swim trunks and a t-shirt he knew showed off the muscles he’d earned at the gym and the dojo.  It even managed to do a decent job hiding his belly, which made it officially his favorite summer shirt.

Three dots appeared, disappeared, then reappeared.   _Oh. Nvm. Pool’s super busy anyway maybe another time_

Well wasn’t that interesting.  Andrew stared at the screen like somehow the answer to life, the universe, and everything would appear on it, before giving up and switching to the thread with Neil.   _what’s going on_  

He watched the screen go dark, and tossed his phone on the bed.  It bounced off and landed face down on the floor and for a moment he felt like joining it.  Instead he grabbed _They Both Die at the End_ and flopped back onto his bed.  

Fine.  It was all fine.  Neil was probably fine.

His eyes definitely did not keep darting to the silent phone on the floor, instead of focusing on the page.  And he definitely did not almost fall over, again, when it finally buzzed.

_I’m sorry_

_I can’t go to the pool_

Andrew stared at the phone for a bit, trying to decipher what this meant, wondering why he felt layers and layers of subtext behind the eight words.  _Do you want to come over_  

_I don’t know_

_Yes_

Aaron wasn’t home; he and Katelyn had already headed over to the pool an hour ago.  Bee was at work. Andrew felt a little twist in his gut at the thought of having Neil over with nobody there to know.  Not that anything would happen; they had never gone further than kissing, though Neil seemed to enjoy that. The boundaries had been set long ago, before Andrew even agreed to go to prom, and he had no reason to believe that had changed.  But still. Andrew could dream.

He debated for a minute, then texted Bee.   _Neil’s coming over_

_Ok.  Do you want me to get pizza or something?_

He huffed at his phone.   He should’ve known she wouldn’t care, given that she had bought him condoms and lube a while back, but he still didn’t know what to make of this.  Everyone else at school always joked about sneaking out, hiding their girlfriend or boyfriend, hooking up in cars over at one of the campsites or whatever.  And here was Bee, not even caring about being cool or whatever, ranting about the deficits of the American public school system while waving around a zucchini.  

_Sausage and onion_ he texted back.

The doorbell rang, and he looked up, startled.  Neil lived too far away to be here already, but it wouldn’t be anybody else.  

He opened the door to Neil, his face flushed and eyes trained near the step.  He looked up, a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes flashing across his mouth.  “Hey.” Andrew stepped back, opening the door wider, but Neil didn’t move. “Maybe I shouldn’t have—”  

Before he could bolt, Andrew reached out and snagged his t-shirt, tugging him into the house.  “What’s going on with you?”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Neil’s eyes held a little tiny flicker of amused irritation.  Good. “Jeez. Give me a second.”

Andrew turned and headed up the stairs, knowing Neil would follow.  He did, though more slowly. “Is no one else home?”

“Ding ding ding!  You win a prize.”

“Is this...okay?”

“Yeah.”  Andrew left his bedroom door conspicuously open, but that didn’t seem to help Neil’s nerves.  If anything, judging by the way his eyes darted to the open hallway, it made it worse. “I’m not going to do anything.”

“No, that’s—I know you’re not.”  

But he still stayed standing near the door, not flopping on the bed with Andrew like he usually would.  Andrew just waited. It didn’t take much to get Neil to talk; the more anxious he was the more he couldn’t stand silence.  “I’m sorry. I can’t go swimming with you.”

“Okay.”  It wasn’t like Andrew gave a shit about swimming, he thought they were going because Neil wanted to.

Neil blinked at his easy acceptance.  “It’s not that I don’t want to."

“Do you not know how to swim?”

This time, the smile reached his eyes.  “No, I know how to swim. It’s...well, maybe it is that I don’t want to.”  

“You don’t want to, we don’t go.”

Neil looked like his brain had frozen with that statement.  He stared at Andrew for a long moment with an expression Andrew didn’t quite understand.  “So. What do we do then?”

“What do we always do?”

Laughing under his breath, Neil closed the door and came over to settle at the foot of Andrew’s bed.  Andrew had started thinking of that as Neil’s spot, as stupid as that was. He mentally shook himself and snagged his laptop off the floor.  “The next episode is up.”

Watching a German TV show with Neil was an experience.  He laughed at jokes Andrew didn’t get, argued with the subtitles half the time, and was generally a pain in the ass.  Andrew found himself watching Neil more than the screen, until Neil caught him and gave him That Look. That Look that was so stupidly breathtaking it should be illegal.

Neil’s eyes flicked down, fixing on Andrew’s middle. Belatedly Andrew realized his shirt had ridden up a little as he’d slumped further into his pillows. He felt his face heat and shifted to tug it down.

Neil reached out a hand, but didn’t touch him. “No, don’t.”  The corner of his mouth twitched up. “I like it.”

“Shut up. No you don’t.”

“Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I?”

Andrew waved a hand at Neil’s slender frame. “You hang out with Kevin and them.” Kevin, the athlete. Kevin, who was completely aware of his six-pack abs and never hesitated to make sure everyone else was too.

There was a peculiar look in Neil’s eyes, as if he saw far more than Andrew intended. Slowly, not looking away from Andrew’s face, he leaned over until he was hovering over the little strip of exposed skin. “Okay?”

Andrew nodded, not totally sure what Neil had planned. When chapped lips lightly brushed against his stomach he jolted. Neil pulled away to check his face, then bent forward and kissed his stomach again.

At least Andrew was prepared that time, for the tickle that went straight to his groin, for the complicated wave of too much feeling that swept over him. He sat up into Neil’s space and pulled him in for a kiss.

It was gentler than he meant it to be. A flicker of fear at the unintended honesty crawled down his spine, only to be chased away by the light touch of fingers in his hair.

A sudden blare of noise from a commercial for weed killer made Neil jump and pull away. “Oops.” He reached out and tapped the space bar, freezing it on a frame with an angry dandelion. “Why does everyone hate dandelions?”

“What the fuck, Josten?”

“No seriously. They’re kind of pretty. And then they get all fuzzy and cute. I don’t get why everyone’s so eager to kill them.”

“Did you know that they’re edible?”

Neil nodded. “I read somewhere that they can be medicinal, too.”

Andrew gasped. “You can read?”

Neil laughed and shoved at his shoulder. “Shut up.”

Andrew grabbed his shirt and pulled him down. They ended up tangled together, Neil half laying on him, kissing the way Neil did everything, fast and sharp and just this side of too much. Andrew’s hands wandered, tracing the planes of muscle through cotton, not sure what they were seeking until they found the hem of his shirt.

Neil sat up abruptly at the shift in fabric, the acute wariness in his eyes fading into something more like exhaustion. Andrew propped himself up on his elbows and studied his face, but there were no answers there.

“Here.  You might as well know.”  Neil hesitated a second before reaching over his shoulder. His jaw was set as he grabbed a fistful of shirt and tugged it over his head.  “This is why I don’t want to go swimming.”

Andrew wanted to say, _you don’t need to do this._  He wanted to say, _you don’t owe me an explanation._  But he didn’t know if he said anything at all.  He couldn’t stop his eyes from roving over Neil’s torso.  

A broad swath of scarred skin, swirling and pink, wound around from his left hip up to his right shoulder, licking along the collar bone and part way down his right arm. Beneath it, Neil was all lean muscle and bone. Andrew wanted to know what that felt like without fabric in the way, to feel it flex under this hands, but he dragged his traitorous thoughts away and sat up, inches from the bare skin he had been aching to touch for months.  A thousand things flitted through his mind, but the word that kept dancing back was _beautiful, beautiful_.  “Yes or no?”

There was just the tiniest fraction of hesitation, then, “Yes.”

Andrew slid his fingers into Neil’s hair and tugged him down.  It had been months since they started doing this routinely, they had spent the last fifteen minutes kissing, and it still somehow felt new every time.  He would have kept it light, but Neil’s tongue traced the seam of his lips and he couldn’t help but open to him.

When they broke apart, Neil’s arms were resting on his shoulders, keeping him close enough everything was slightly blurry.  “You’re not…”

“I’m not what?”  

“I don’t know.  Grossed out?”

Andrew pulled away, just enough that Neil’s eyes were in focus.  “Why would I be?”

Neil just shrugged, as if the answer was obvious.

Andrew looked down, examining the skin from this angle.  It looked a little like a satellite photograph of sand dunes, a topographical map of an unknown world.  He bent his head and brushed his lips against the section along the collarbone. It felt strange under his mouth, rough and smooth at the same time, but not unpleasant.  

Neil shivered, and Andrew took that as invitation to press his lips to another spot, over his sternum.  “Tickles,” Neil said, his voice tight with suppressed laughter, hands clenching Andrew’s shirt.

That temptation was too good to resist.  Andrew attacked the line of demarcation with soft, open-mouthed kisses, breathing out as he moved up to Neil’s shoulder. Neil was pulling away and tugging him closer at the same time, laughing as he ended up on his back, Andrew braced over him until with one final yank he toppled.

He could feel Neil, pressing into his thigh, and his face started burning as he realized his swim trunks were doing nothing to hide his own response.  There was something warring on Neil’s face, something Andrew felt echoing in his gut. Tentative fingers found their way under Andrew’s shirt, tracing up his back in a way designed to make him spontaneously combust.  It was a miracle, really, that he didn’t burst into flames when Neil curved up to kiss his jaw, then the soft spot underneath his ear.

Andrew closed his eyes, trying to will some sort of control over his shaking hands.  Neil had to notice the tremors as Andrew slid one hand down his side, exploring the contrast in textures.  His waistband was right there, loose enough to slip a hand into, but Andrew paused, pulling back to ask—

The distant slam of a door had them both freezing.  Andrew glanced at the clock on the cable box; it was too early for Bee, those footsteps coming up the stairs too light and quick.  Then there was pounding on his door. “Andrew, for fuck’s sake!”

“Fuck off, Aaron!”

The pounding got louder, settled into a rhythm like drums as Aaron used both sets of knuckles to make as much racket as possible.  Groaning, Andrew pushed himself off the bed; behind him, he could hear the rustle of fabric as Neil pulled his shirt back on. Andrew cracked open the door.  “Can I help you?”

“You said you were going to be there, you asshole,” Aaron snarled, shoving at the door.  “Instead it was just me and Katelyn and all those stuck up assho—”

Aaron’s rant cut off abruptly as he caught sight of Neil on Andrew’s bed.  Andrew did a double take as he realized Neil’s shirt was on backwards, and he had no hope of preventing his huff of laughter.  Aaron’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times before he found his voice. “Seriously? You ditched me to hook up with him and didn’t even have the decency to fucking text me?  I had to deal with Reynolds by myself. Reynolds! In a fucking bikini!”

Neil snorted quietly, hiding his laugh behind his hand with very limited success.  Aaron turned on him. “Come on, I just got yelled at by _your friend_ for looking at her boobs when they’re like, eye height.  What the hell was I supposed to do? I had nowhere else to look!”

Giving up all pretense, Neil lost it, collapsing backwards on the bed and howling.  Aaron’s mouth twitched, and then he started in too. With a sigh, Andrew stepped back, letting the door swing open.  He shoved Neil’s feet out of his way and sat; somehow those feet ended up in his lap while Neil and Aaron bickered at each other.  

In a year, everything would be changing.  In a year, they would be high school graduates, heading off to wherever their paths took them.  It was hard to imagine that now; living somewhere without Aaron, omnipresent in the background. Where he wouldn’t see Neil every day.  But that was a problem for another time. He leaned back against the wall and let their voices wash over him.

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know if you think the rating should be bumped, I was torn between T and M for this. HMU on [Tumblr](https://fuzzballsheltiepants.tumblr.com/) if you have any questions or just wanna chat!


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